Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan is expected to outline his proposals on poverty on Thursday morning at the American Enterprise Institute. Below are a few questions worth considering when evaluating his recommendations on this important topic.
1. Does compassionate conservatism really just mean cutting spending while saying you care about the poor?
Paul Ryan has said that we shouldn’t measure compassion by how much we spend. Yet, he seems to measure it by how much we cut spending. His budget proposal targets medical, food and other assistance for lower-income Americans for huge and disproportionate cuts - almost 70 percent of his entire reduction in government spending.
2. Will Rep. Ryan include proposals that have been shown to both reward work and reduce poverty, such as increasing the minimum wage and extending benefits to the long-term unemployed who are looking for work?
Even as Governor Romney has urged his fellow Republicans to support an increase in the minimum wage, Representative Ryan has opposed this commonsense step to lift nearly five million Americans in working families out of poverty. Additionally, Ryan has stood by as the Republican leadership in the House has blocked action to extend federal unemployment benefits, resulting in these benefits being cut off for over 3 million Americans who are actively looking for work. (Unemployment benefits have kept over 11 million Americans out of poverty since 2008.)
3. Will Rep. Ryan support flexible assistance to states to help struggling Americans, or will he push states to cut such assistance?
Republicans have often touted increased flexibility to cut benefits for needy Americans, but frequently oppose providing states with flexibility to improve assistance. For example, Representative Ryan’s budget proposed completely eliminating the Social Services Block Grant, which is one of the most flexible sources of federal funding for helping struggling and vulnerable populations, with even the Ryan budget conceding that “States are given wide discretion to determine how to spend this money." Additionally, Representative Ryan opposed providing more state flexibility through waivers within the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, even if states committed to putting more recipients to work.
4. Will Rep. Ryan’s proposal fit into a balanced approach to address the deficit?
In 2012, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote to Congress about Ryan’s budget proposal, saying: “Congress faces a difficult task to balance needs and resources and allocate burdens and sacrifices. Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all... The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria." In 2014, Representative Ryan and his Republican colleagues have voted for several bills that would extend some business tax breaks on a permanent basis, adding over $500 billion to the deficit and further constraining spending on Head Start, job training, child care, housing assistance, and other "non-defense discretionary" programs so vital to helping Americans climb out of poverty.
